How to Manually Delete Old/Empty WSUS computer Group from Database

Recently i was trying to delete/Remove one of the old computer groups under WSUS Console - Computers - All Computers. This Group was an old group with no members/Clients or any pending approvals any more. I tried removing it from the GUI by Right licking the object and Delete but the server hanged and i got connection error as shown below.

This problem might occur in WSUS servers utilizing the internal DB which has several limits and with the huge number of updates and many groups you can face such issue.

To solve this problem and manually remove this Group you will need to work it from the database and edit couple of tables as follows:

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comments:

Pretty sure Microsoft will stop supporting you if they ever find out that you manipulated THEIR database. I say this knowing that this is the same policy that MS applies to other products like SharePoint and TFS... it is a reasonable assumption that it'll apply to WSUS (or SCOM/SCCM/SCSM/etc) as well.

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If you don't want to manipulate the WSUS DB directly, you can accomplish this the long way:1. Create a new Update View2. Choose "Updates are approved for a specific group..." (then select the group of course)3. In the update view, choose Approval: Approved, Status: Any4. Select all > right click > Approve... > find the group and choose "Same as Parent" > Ok5. Delete the group as per normal

Personally, I use a powershell script to do this which also cycles through subgroups.

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